Dakar by Bus

Taking Dakar’s buses, the diagen-djiaye, is an art. They hurtle up and down the Route de Oukham, from town at one end and past the turning to my house at the other. They are run by groups; a driver and two ‘apprentis’, dusty-faced boys who hang off the back shouting their destination “dakadakadakadaka” for town and “wakawakawakawaka” for my end of the route. These boys can look around ten years old and be as mean as anything.

The buses are in bad shape and you can always hear them coming. Their rattling tin structures are held together by people, five to a row, ten rows, two passengers in the front with the driver. The only exits are at the back and at the front, and no alley for passing through the bus. So if you get in, you have to make quite sure that you don’t want to get out very quickly. They do not let you stand and if one person climbs out, everybody has to up and advance “advanadvanadvan” through the bus until the seats are filled again, with more entering the back until the whole bus is full, “fesnafesnafesna”.

When you want to get off, you stand and tap a coin noisily on the roof and shout “maima”, ‘let me off’, until the driver slows down. Sometimes he doesn’t want to stop and then old men and fat women start shouting “maiko”, 'let her down', in a crescendo, sometimes in chorus, sometimes in harmony, until he is forced to pull over. You must always grumble when getting out, either about the time it took for the driver to stop or about the change the apprentis gave you, as the fares are fixed but no one knows what they are and they differ from bus to bus.

The floor of the bus has holes in it to give you the Chessington World of Adventures feeling. There is nothing more fun than to watch pot holes disappear at speed underneath you.

The front of the bus is plastered, usually seeping half way down the windscreen, in photos of religious idols and pop idols. Cheikh Ibra Fall stands in austere dress next to Viviane N’Dour in threads of lycra. He is bony because he lived a life of hard work in devotion to his spiritual guide. She is bony because otherwise she wouldn’t fit into her dress.

At night time the buses are packed more than usual with people going home from work and a bare light bulb lights the inside, swinging to and fro and knocking people’s heads when they stand up.

A fat lady climbs in next to me. She is wearing a pale blue bouboub widely cut across her shoulders so that her bra straps are showing, her shoulders and much of her back. I can almost feel the cushion of her skin and she smells of perfumed water. With her bra straps she is saying ‘I have nursed ten children and will nurse their children too’. She all but smothers me in her folds of flesh and, perching on the middle tip-up seat which accommodates only the smallest of bottoms, I squash up next to my neighbour on the other side and apologise for all but smothering him. He doesn’t seem to mind.

The apprentis starts shouting “passpasspasspass” for us to pass back our fares. Each coin travels ten rows, from hand to hand, the apprentis prodding the fat lady with a dirty finger, and her fleshy fingers poking the bony man infront, and he tapping the girl in a headscarf infront of him and she pointing to the boy two rows infront of her until the passenger has been identitfied, says where he is going, argues with the apprentis about the price, then reluctantly passes back a coin, from hand to podgy hand until it reaches the apprentis who roots around in his pencil case, finds the right change, prods the fat woman and gives her the coin which moves deftly along the rows until it reaches its rightful owner. With one passenger taken care of, so the next must be attended to.

“This is gymnastiques,” says my neighbour, a young man coming home from college. My stop comes and I bang on the roof. The fat woman shouts “mai-ko” and the driver slows down. She starts grumbling and I have to climb over her because she refuses to move. I cut my leg on a shard of metal sticking out from one of the seats.

Just as I start to climb down the wooden boards at the back of the bus, the driver moves off. "Mai-ko" they all shout and the apprentis rings a bell loudly. I grab hold of the ladder which is partly attached to the back and swing down onto the road, which has started moving. The bus behind advances towards me and I am engulfed in fumes from my own bus. This is all part of the diagen-djiaye experience.

Oncl' Sam's

Today is the big festival of the mutton in Senegal and everything is shut. Shops, internet, transport. Everybody is at home slaughtering a sheep and letting its blood run into the earth, to keep the family well for the year ahead. They tell me that my neighbours will come to give me some meat later- at least, this is what happens in the countryside. But my street is new to me and even though the thought of mutton doesn't excite me much, because all the shops are shut I only have crispbread and peanut butter to eat so rather hope it does happen.

My flat is lovely to wake up in. My bedroom faces onto the end of the airfield (and this baobab tree, see photo) where planes don’t come and all I can hear in the mornings is birds perched on the distant baobab trees. Sometimes one comes knocking on my window.

After six months of living either in a compound with lots of people, or in other people’s houses as a kind of guest that never leaves, to live alone is a treat. I listen to the World Service almost all the time, catching those programmes you always seem to miss when there is going out to work to be done, or other people around. I work when I like, sometimes until two am and then go to the beach in the day. I eat chocolate for dinner, if I feel like it, and if I want to I can do quite a good job of forgetting I am in Africa. I think I will last much longer here if I have my own hideaway because in the end, we all hanker after the familiar, after crispbread and peanut butter instead of mutton intestines. But it doesn’t mean I love Africa any less.

Last night I finished work at midnight and I felt like dancing. I called my friend Gabi, a computer engineer and asked if he felt like going out. Taxi prices have shot up because everyone is saving for their sheep and I had long discussions with taxi men as to why I should have to pay more just because they have three wives and twenty children to feed. Gabi lives in a neighbourhood with a lot of Congolese and Ivorian people and there is a place there called ‘Oncl’ Sam’s’, a kind of warehouse filled with plastic furniture, florescent strip lights and hundreds of people grouped around tables groaning under the weight of empty beer bottles.

Gabi and I sat a table with some of his friends and I counted forty-five empty beer bottles on our table before my eyes blurred. There were girls twitching and grinding their bottoms to Congolese songs pumping out of a booth in the corner and men wearing sunglasses slumped low in their chairs, looking like they were going to fall asleep. Every now and then, they would leap up and dance in a row, all watching themselves in the huge mirrors that lined every inch of wall space, doing the most extraordinary dance moves, to great applause from their friends.

One girl in particular caught everyone's attention. She wore a very small pair of jeans and a g-string with a silver bow joining the threads together. She was a hit with the boys. The silver bow flashed and glinted under the harsh lights so that no one could take their eyes off it. Her perfectly round bottom became the focus point of the evening. Everyone was so beautifully turned out and I, as ever, felt like a refugee even though I was wearing a dress. I felt so white under those lights, and so old looking on at the scene of debauchery with wide-eyed shock. I had fun but I hope I never have to go there again, or if I do, I will make sure I wear much less clothing and drink a lot more beer.

I have a neighbour in Dakar who is a bit more up my street. She’s from Birmingham and lives alone, too. We said we would go out and listen to music together. It’s good to have friends.

Every afternoon this week, after I finish work, I have been going to the beach below the cliffs opposite my house. A lighthouse looms above it on the cliffs and the sea is calm, protected by the bay. I take Jane Austen and wield it at the boys like a sword and hope they will leave me alone. In this cold weather the sea is quite soft and peaceful and sometimes it rubs off on me.